Otherlands: A World in the Making - A Sunday Times bestseller

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A brilliant series of reconstructions of life in the deep past, richly imagined from the fine details of the fossil record... A real achievement... Reading Halliday's book is as near to the experience of visiting these ancient worlds as you are likely to get Jon Turney, Arts Desk The Twins—two men, one monstrously fat and the other painfully skinny, who appear in different incarnations throughout the network. They pursue Paul Jonas relentlessly.

Otherlands is one of those rare books that's both deeply informative and daringly imaginative. It will change the way you look at the history of life, and perhaps also its future Elizabeth Kolbert, author of THE SIXTH EXTINCTION The Ramesseum itself was originally known by a name that translates as ‘The House of Millions of Years’, an epithet that could easily be appropriated for the Earth. Our planet’s past also lies hidden under the dirt. It wears the scars of its formation and change in its crust, and it, too, is a mortuary, memorializing its inhabitants in stone, fossils acting as grave marker, mask and body. Mr. Sellars—a mysterious man kept under house arrest on a US Military base. He is responsible for recruiting people to infiltrate Otherland and uncover its secrets. Although mentally tortured by the danger to which he has submitted them, he affectionately refers to them as his volunteers and tries to aid them in every way possible.Award-winning young palaeobiologist Thomas Halliday immerses us in a series of ancient landscapes, from the mammoth steppe in Ice Age Alaska to the lush rainforests of Eocene Antarctica, with its colonies of giant penguins, to Ediacaran Australia, where the moon is far brighter than ours today. We visit the birthplace of humanity; we hear the crashing of the highest waterfall the Earth has ever known; and we watch as life emerges again after the asteroid hits, and the age of the mammal dawns. Written with gusto and bravado . . . Otherlands is a verbal feast.You feel like you are there on the Mammoth Steppe, some 20,000 years ago, as frigid winds blow off the glacial front.” —Steve Brusatte, Scientific American Leverhulme Research Fellow wins Hugh Miller Writing Competition". University of Birmingham. June 22, 2018 . Retrieved 2022-08-28. Thomas Halliday's debut is a kaleidoscopic and evocative journey into deep time. He takes quiet fossil records and complex scientific research and brings them alive—riotous, full-colored, and three-dimensional. You'll find yourself next to giant two-meter penguins in a forested Antarctica 41 million years ago or hearing singing icebergs in South Africa some 444 million years ago. Maybe most important, Otherlands is a timely reminder of our planet's impermanence and what we can learn from the past." - Andrea Wulf, author of The Invention of Nature

A mesmerising journey into those vast stretches of Earth's pre-history that lie behind us, on such a scale that you experience a kind of temporal vertigo just thinking about it... [Halliday is] a brilliant writer, his lyrical style vividly conjuring myriad lost worlds... It's obviously a bit of a gamble choosing one's Book of the Year in March - but there's a very good chance already that mine will be Otherlands. Stunning Christopher Hart, Mail on Sunday Gally—a young boy who travels with Paul. He is neither a puppet (non-sentient character) nor a citizen (a human wearing an avatar).As they try to discover the motivations of the Grail Brotherhood—obviously not world domination, since they already control the world—they discover that they are unable to log off. They are trapped, and if they die in the network, they also die in real life. The series covers their adventures as they seek to uncover the truth and wake their loved ones from their comas.

An extraordinary history of our almost-alien Earth... Epically cinematic... The writing is so palpably alive. A book of almost unimaginable riches. It is a book that will make its own solid and lasting contribution. It could well be the best I read in 2022 - and I know it's only January James McConnachie, Sunday Times Olga Pirofsky—One of the many actors for the Net-based interactive character Uncle Jingle. She is a widow, having lost her husband and son about 30 years prior to the beginning of the series. While working as Uncle Jingle, she begins having headaches. As she researches Tandagore Syndrome, which she suspects she has, she begins to learn of the children who are falling into comas around the world. Halliday takes us on a journey into deep time in this epic book, showing us Earth as it used to be and the worlds that were here before ours ‘The Hottest Books of the Year Ahead’, Independent A kaleidoscopic and evocative journey into deep time" (Andrea Wulf, author of The Invention of Nature), from the Ice Age to the first appearance of microbial life 550 million years ago, by a brilliant young paleobiologist. THOMAS HALLIDAYis a palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist. He holds a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of Birmingham, and is a Scientific Associate of the Natural History Museum. His research combines theoretical and real data to investigate long-term patterns in the fossil record, particularly in mammals. Thomas was the winner of the Linnean Society's John C. Marsden Medal in 2016 and the Hugh Miller Writing Competition in 2018.Williams, Tad (2013), "The Boy Detective of Oz: An Otherland Story", in Adams, John Joseph; Cohen, Douglas (eds.), Oz Reimagined: New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond, Las Vegas, NV: 47 North, pp.84–123, ISBN 9781611099041 A fascinating journey through Earth's history... [Halliday] is appropriately lavish in his depiction of the variety and resilience of life, without compromising on scientific accuracy... To read Otherlands is to marvel not only at these unfamiliar lands and creatures, but also that we have the science to bring them to life in such vivid detail Gege Li, New Scientist This is a piece of nature writing that covers millions of years, from the very start of evolution, while capturing the almost unthinkable ways geography has shifted and changed over time. Epic in scope and executed with charming enthusiasm, Otherlands looks set to be a big talking point for fans of non-fiction in 2022 ‘The 15 New Novels And Non-Fiction Books To Read In 2022’, Mr Porter Azador—a Romany so stereotypical that he is almost amusing. He knows a great deal about the Otherland network, although he is unwilling to share his information. Book review – Endless Novelties of Extraordinary Interest: The Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger and the Birth of ModernOceanography October 19, 2023

A stirring, eye-opening journey into deep time, from the Ice Age to the first appearance of microbial life 550 million years ago, by a brilliant young paleobiologist." [4]Otherlands review: A fascinating journey through Earth's history". New Scientist. January 19, 2022. On October 9, 2014, Drago Entertainment revealed that it had taken over the game's development. [13] The game was preparing for early access through Steam in August 2015, [14] but the release was postponed until September 10 due to bug problems in the U.S. and German servers. After releasing through Steam Early Access, Otherland's development woes continued. The game was removed from the Steam store due to alleged technical issues on January 28, 2016. [15] The game became available again on October 4, 2016. Servers for the game were shut down permanently on September 23, 2021. Remarkable... Ingenious... A work of immense imagination [...] rooted firmly in the actual science Stuart Kelly, Scotsman A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting. On October 1, 2008, RealU and dtp entertainment announced that they were developing a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) based on the novels. [10] The Otherland MMO was scheduled to be released in Europe and North America in 2012. [11] However, after dtp entertainment (RealU's parent company) entered insolvency, RealU confirmed that it was laying off its staff and that development on the Otherland game was cancelled. [12]